DescriptionAnimal horn. Black resinous material covering the open end with red, white, and yellow glass beads pressed into the material in a decorative pattern. Distal end of horn cut open to create a small hole. Instrument is part of a set used by the Valley Tonga people in the Zambezi Valley on both sides of the river in Zimbabwe and Zambia. Used in the Ngoma Buntibe dance, nominally a funeral dance but done on many other occasions too. With around twelve of these horns, each tuned to a different note of a heptatonic scale, together with up to six drums, small to very big, carved and painted. The nyele may be made of a horn but it is not blown trumpet fashion but like an end-blown flute. The open end of a horn is much too big to blow flute style so they part-close it with beeswax or propolis. It still remains really hard to blow however, and sounds very loud. |